


Ever and Always, Exactly Right

by ashesandhoney



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Fluff and Smut, Multi, OT3, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-04-12 01:02:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4459310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have so many partially finished OT3 scenes hiding in my hard drive. So as I finish them, I am going to post them up here. Most of them are cut from Full Circle and most of them will just be context free smut. </p>
<p>This isn't a coherent story. It is just straight up threesome porn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Utterly context free morning sex.

Jem woke to soft voices and fingers tracing lines over his chest. He smiled and let himself drift in the moment. Her head was on his shoulder but she wasn't talking to him. Will's voice was there but muffled. Tessa laughed a little and shifted. Will was speaking into her neck and then pulled her back against him. Her hand was still on Jem's shoulder but the warmth of her against his side was gone. He stretched and rolled over to follow them. 

"Now look what you've done, you've woke him up," Tessa said. 

"He's a layabout, it's good for him to wake up early," Will said. 

"Shut up and come closer," Jem told them. 

Will had looped his arms around Tessa's waist so she was held tight with her back to his chest. He had settled his chin on her shoulder and was watching Jem with those midnight blue eyes. Tessa's nightgown was askew so her collar bone was bare and the fabric had ridden most of the way up her thighs. Jem reached out and ran his hand from her knee up to her hip, pushing the dress higher. She held his gaze as he did it. He ran his other hand up her other leg until he could hold her hips between his hands. 

"Closer than that," he said tilting his head at her and she reached out a knee and hooked it over his waist. He pushed up against her until he was between her legs. She twisted in Will's arms so that she could wrap them around him. 

"Better?" she asked. 

"Much better," he said.

He ground against her as he leaned in for a kiss  but Will got in the way. Jem couldn't say exactly how it had happened, only that it had. Tessa laughed again as Will pressed the kiss from a gentle good morning to something deeper. Jem let go of Tessa to grab hold of Will's face and pull him harder into the kiss. Will did the same thing, releasing Tessa's waist to grab a fistful of Jem's shirt and hold him in against her. She was still there between them and she was never one to be left out. She tightened her thighs where they held to Jem's waist and kissed a line up his neck. She tried but couldn't twist far enough to do the same to Will without letting go so she turned back to Jem and kissed down the other way from his ear to his collarbone. 

Will pressed a last long lingering kiss to Jem's mouth before he pulled back and looked at him. His lips were a little swollen and his expression was soft. 

"Nobody has anything pressing to do today do they?" Will asked. 

"I can think of a few things," Tessa said with a shift of her hips that made Jem gasp. 

"Anything that would require getting out of bed?" Jem asked her. 

"No," she said. 

"That's good," Will said and then pulled away from her so that she was no longer leaning against him. She fell back against the mattress with a little noise of surprise. Will leaned down over her and kissed her. Gentler than he had been with Jem, he was always so much gentler with Tessa, he pressed kisses against her mouth. Jem grazed teeth down the side of her neck and she shuddered against him. Her legs were still wrapped around him and the new position let him pin her to the bed with his hips. He trailed kisses up her neck in a long wet line that was harder and messier than Will's kisses on her mouth. When he found the place where her pulse beat close to the surface, he sucked hard enough that he knew there would be a mark later. He slid lower and did it again. Each time she murmured against him.

Her fingers were tight in Will's hair and she kept pressing her hips up against Jem in a repetitive motion that would have been very different with less clothing in the way. As though he had the same thought, one of Will's hands had slid down Jem's back and pulled at his shirt. He pulled away from Tessa and Will followed him up to help him pull it off. Will kissed his way down Jem's bare chest to his waist with all the gentleness he had kissed Tessa with. 

"You're needy today," Jem teased. 

"You on the other hand are needy always," Will said. 

Tessa pulled herself up by grabbing hold of Will's arm and knelt beside them with a little pout. Will grinned at her and said, "And you're worse than both of us." 

"I'm not needy," she said, "I just don't like being left out." 

"Apologies, my lady," Will said with so much sincerity that the sarcasm dripped off every word. Before Tessa could retaliate with some comment or a shove, he kissed her again. He had one hand on Jem's hip and he stroked the skin there with his thumb. It was an absent gesture but it made Jem's heart rate climb and his stomach tighten. Jem wrapped an arm around Will's shoulder and helped him pull Tessa's clothing free. Her hands wandered as Will kissed her harder. 

She curled her fingers into Jem's waist band and then let go and slid them inside. She rubbed just a little but he was already getting hard and barely needed the help. He let his head fall forward against Will's shoulder as she pushed his clothing loose enough to get a better hold.    
She kept her hands on him as Will did something with his fingers to make her gasp. Jem turned his head to look at Will's hand now cupped between her legs. He reached out to run his hand up the line of her body. He traced over the soft skin of her stomach and between her breasts to where she had bitten her lip as her eyes had fallen shut. 

"I want you, while you're with her," Will said in a stage whisper against Jem's ear. 

Jem laughed but Tessa was already pulling him closer and then down with her into the bed. He was still laughing as he settled down against her. He didn't slide into her just yet. He liked the way she twisted against him when he was almost where she wanted him and wanted to draw that out. She mock glared at him and he kissed her nose before returned it. 

Will was behind him and the distraction of hands and something wet in intimate palces made his expression evaporate into a shiver. Tessa writhed and Jem finally slid in where she wanted him and her whole body reacted as he pushed as far as he could as slowly as he could. Her head fell back and she took a  deep breath. 

"Better?" Jem asked. 

"Yes," she said looking back up at him but he had fallen still. She pulled him into a kiss. They were barely started because they were waiting for Will. Jem could feel Will's legs against the back of his thighs and just that little whisper of a touch was enough to  distract him. Tessa sunk her teeth gently into his lower lip and it pulled him back into the kiss. He kissed her and moved against and inside her very slowly for a moment but then Will pushed a wet finger into him. He gapsed and Will added another and he lost his concentration entirely. 

Tessa didn't try to pull him back this time, she just pulled him down so he could press his face against her neck while she pet his hair. The first few times they had done this, it had hurt and this first part always reminded him of that pain though he knew it wasn't going to last. The push and pull of those fingers, the feel of someone else inside him, pushed every other thought and sensation to the side. 

He kissed the side of Tessa's neck and she cooed something comforting in his ear as she pressed her hips up into him. He was deep inside her and he pushed back against her. It wasn't really a thrust, it wasn't that intentional, just leaning his hips into her as she pushed hers up. It was incredibly gentle and incredibly slow as Will eased the tension out of his muscles with long practiced fingers. 

"May I?" Will asked leaning down to kiss the back of his neck. 

"If you don't soon, I am going to have some sort of fit," Jem muttered against Tessa. 

He pushed back towards Will and it pulled him nearly out of Tessa's body. When he looked down at her she was smiling. She laced her fingers together behind his neck and then looked away from him to flash a grin at Will. She had braced herself for this and that thought alone would have been enough to make Jem hard. 

Will pushed all the way into Jem and it did hurt for the first few strokes as his body readjusted to this. To the feeling of having someone else inside. It stretched and even with everything Will had done before this, some of his muscles still protested the entry. Will groaned each time he pressed all the way in and Jem answered it with a little sound that he pretended wasn't as wanton as it probably sounded. 

Tessa and Will moved around him. From the  little things like Tessa's hand on his chest and her fingers in his hair to the way they matched each other. He was caught between them. He slid into Tessa when Will pushed into him and then the draw back that made him shudder. Will started slow. Deep and slow. All the way in and almost but never quite all the way out. Jem let them have him. He was there between them but he let go of everything and just drifted away into sensations he didn't have full control over. Will kissed his back whenever he leaned in hard. Tessa kissed his neck and his cheek and his open mouth. 

As the slowness fell away, as Will started to press in with a rhythm instead of those long slow strokes, Jem did little more than hold on. Tessa could predict what Will was doing better than he could and her hips rolled with his thrusts. She pushed up as he pushed down and Jem gasped. That they could keep it up, the matched rhythm, as Will went faster was what made this so incredible. Anything that had resembled pain was gone now. The sensation was nothing but pleasure. Overwhelming but delicious.

"Jem?" Tessa said and he had to blink a few times before he could make sense of her expression below him. He was already fighting against an orgasm. He wasn't sure how long he had lasted but he wasn't ready for it to be over. 

"Please don't stop," he said and then he kissed her, hard. She opened her mouth so that he could slide his tongue inside. It wasn't a gentle kiss, it wasn't romantic or sweet. It was deep and hard and she met him with just as much enthusiasm. 

He reached down between their bodies to press his fingers into the place just above where their bodies met. He was clumsy. Too much of his attention was taken up by Will's movements. The thrusts were hard enough now that Jem was aware of the sound of skin against skin. The sound drew his attention almost as much as the sensations themselves.

Jem came first. 

He'd tried to push Tessa over that edge before the pleasure crashed around him like a wave but it didn't work. He'd been fighting it so when it took him, it took him hard. He cried out and grabbed on to her as he was pushed into her a few more times. There was a moment where everything paused until the shuddering finally passed. Tessa was petting his hair and Will was running his hands down his back. He was still deep inside her though he was softening as the frozen moment stretched. 

Tessa grinned and kissed him gently. He forced his eyes to focus on her as he said, "I want you higher." 

It took her a moment to under stand what he meant and a few more of bodies moving against bodies to settle them into a new position. She sat up against the headboard and he buried his face between her legs. He had come inside her and left a mess but he'd given up caring about that. He sucked on her as Will picked right up where the last moment had left off. Jem wasn't hard any more but the sensation was still enough to make him shudder. Will's hands were curled around his waist and he held on tight and went hard. 

Jem's stomach curled and his mind swam in sensation. If he had any sense of self preservation, he would have asked Will to stop but he didn't. He stayed where he had been put, he kept his knees braced and his hips up. He salvaged as much coherent thought as he could and put it into the things he wanted to do to Tessa. 

She tasted like salt and sex and something warm and earthy and not quite sweet. He sucked and licked and grazed teeth over her as she shifted  against him. He had looped his hands around her thighs and they rested on her stomach. One wandered higher, almost without conscious thought, to her breasts where he squeezed until she gasped. 

Will was still there behind him, harder and faster now and Jem attempted to push every sensation he recieved into Tessa. It worked until Will came. He pushed down and the thrusts became harder and the angle pushed Jem's knees out from under him. For a moment he collapsed into the bed and he was nothing but Will's until it was over. Will collapsed down beside them with a grin and a breathy laugh. He kissed Jem's shoulder and lay his head against Tessa's thigh. She pushed damp hair back from his forehead and Jem's attention shattered all over again, not from sensation but just from him looking flushed and sweaty and sated. 

Jem turned back to Tessa and gave her his full attention. Will was more absent, hazier after his orgasm than Jem was. His hands found Jem's shoulders and Tessa's legs and he pushed himself up to kiss her mouth and then such her nipple into his mouth hard enough to make her back arch. Jem kept his attention lower. He pushed a pair of fingers into her and then sucked until her hips twisted and she cried out his name into Will's mouth. She grabbed hold of his hair and after it taking so long to get here, he held her at the point of the orgasm long enough to make her thrash. 

Her fingers weren't just twisted in his hair, they were tight enough to hurt. Will had caught hold of her face and turned it into him to whisper gentle things to her while Jem made her cry out again. When he finally pulled her down into the bed she was limp and her whole body was flushed. Without needing to say it aloud, they fell back into a heap of limps with Tessa pressed between them. 

She lay with her head on Will's chest and her back tight to Jem's. Her hair had come loose from the braid she'd put it in for the night and the strands were sticking to everyone's skin. Jem kissed up her shoulder and then her neck before he leaned past her to press a kiss to Will's mouth. 

They stay curled around each other in bed until almost noon.

 

 


	2. Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An all-human roommates AU.

Will felt the bed shift and opened his eyes to the wall. She lay down behind him and curled an arm around his waist. It wasn't a come-on, it was a hug, like they'd been together forever, not at all like the truth of three dates that had all ended in bed. He took her hand and pulled her in a little closer. He could pretend to be in love while he was half asleep. He wasn't likely to find it anywhere else. 

She stiffened and started to pull back and he muttered, "It's fine, stay." 

"Will," she said and he frowned because the voice was wrong. The girl he'd been seeing was local and this accent wasn't. He shook himself the rest of the way awake and turned to look over his shoulder at her. She'd pulled away from him and was staring at him with confused eyes. He still held her hand and he let go of it as though it were on fire. 

This was not his girlfriend. 

This was his roommate's girlfriend. 

Tessa Gray was blushing and her eyes were wide. She had gray eyes, almost blue but not quite. She was everything he wanted and nothing he could have. Her hair was down and her makeup all washed off. He'd never seen her like this, she didn't loiter around their place too often and never like this. She never looked this vulnerable when she was anywhere that Will could see her. 

His heart rate kicked up a little faster. 

His fingers itched to each out to touch her again. 

That was impossible. 

Nothing about his crush was allowable. 

He pressed it down and tried to ignore it. 

"Do you often sleep in Jem's bed?" she asked after a moment of staring. She was biting her lip and trying to compose herself and it was adorable. His heart roared in his ears, telling him to protect her and take care of her and run his finger along her mouth. He tried again to press the crush back into the box full of other impossible things where it belonged. 

"My date is a kicker and Jem usually doesn't care," Will said though if Tessa was coming over, he was going to care. Will couldn't remember in that moment why he was so late getting home. He had no idea what time it was but he had managed to bring a girl home and then get restless enough to leave her so it couldn't be early. 

"You have a date over and you're sleeping in Jem's bed," she said with the start of a smile. The scarlet blush was fading until she looked more amused than embarrassed. Will sat up because lying on his back looking up at her was not helping him ignore all the things he wasn't allowed to feel. 

"She fell asleep and she kicks," Will said, "I swear, I'm going to have bruises in the morning."

Tessa laughed. That flash of nervous vulnerability had faded and she was herself. She wore a tank top that he was trying very hard not to notice and the blankets had pooled around her waist. She still leaned back from him but she was calm and confident.  She was so perfectly comfortable in her relationship that she could sit in bed with him without all the complicated questions of betrayals and boundaries that were rushing around Will's head. She didn’t have any of those impossible thoughts. His heart didn't like that discovery and he reminded it to shut up. 

"You stay here then, I'll wait for Jem out in the living room," she said with another laugh and she started to get up. He reached out and caught her elbow at exactly the wrong time. He unbalanced her while she was still tangled in the blankets and she fell back into him. She tried to catch herself and he tried to over correct and he dropped her into his lap. She looked up at him, startled and blushing again and he held her gaze for too long. 

"No, you stay here, this bed is more yours than mine," he had started to say before knocking her down and he finished the sentence while she was staring up at him. She pulled herself up out of his lap and he didn't try to help in case he made it worse again. He was far too aware of the smell of her hair and the warmth of her skin to behave normally. He needed to run away and relearn how to think but she was back to smiling and he never had her undivided attention and it froze him in place. 

"You don't like your girlfriend very much, do you?" she said and the shift in topic took him so by surprise that he answered her honestly. 

"No, not really," he heard himself say more before he had decided to say it.

"She's nice," Tessa said and it was half teasing, half a question. Will leaned back against the headboard and crossed his arms. He put as much space between them as he could without getting up or looking like he was drawing back from her. He didn’t know how effective it was. 

"She's perfectly nice," he agreed, "She likes dogs, is studying psychology, has a bad relationship with her mother and a good one with her sister, she is perfectly nice." 

"You're a cat person?" Tessa asked. 

"That's as good a way to put it as any other," Will said with a shrug. 

Tessa lay back down on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows to look at him. Will stared at her and hoped the alarm beating in his chest didn't show on his face. This wouldn't have made breathing hard if it had been anyone else. A girlfriend, a stranger, a nine foot ogre wouldn’t have unnerved him so much. But it wasn't any of those things lying in bed with him. It was Tessa. The girl that he couldn't even want let alone have. 

Sometimes it felt more manageable because they were friends and sometimes it was worse. Will didn't have many friends. He was awkward and covered it up with a brand of self confident sarcasm that chased most people away. 

Tessa found him funny. 

She would talk books with him and argue with him when he pulled up some obscure theory that made other people roll their eyes. He could still have those conversations. He could still see her. It was nice. But it meant the crush wouldn’t die. His heart just kept finding new things to love about her. 

But for all they had in common, their friendship still hinged on James Carstairs. As far as Will was concerned, that made it more important. He couldn't stomach sharing Jem with most people. Usually he just wanted other people to go the hell away and leave the two of them alone but Tessa fit. 

Jem liked to make jokes about how introducing someone to Will was more difficult than introducing them to his parents. There was truth in it. Will hadn’t gotten along with a single date before her. Jem had brought home Tessa and she had spent half that evening reading through Will's bookshelf and had gone away with his recommendations tucked into her bag. No one liked his Romance poets or his old adventure novels or his massive collection of folklore. Tessa read it and talked to him about it. 

It should have been perfect. Should have been easy. His best friend had a girlfriend that he liked. She didn't get defensive when they disappeared into being Will-and-Jem in that strange place where the rest of the world didn't exist. She was kind and smart and loved him enough that Will didn't want to chase her off.  Instead of being happy for them, his heart ached. Instead of just enjoying having a new friend, Will had gone and cultivated a crush the size of a small country. Now it kept trying to convince him to do impossible things like reach out and touch her hair. 

"Are we having a sleepover now? Should I go get the nail polish? I can never do my left hand properly," he asked trying to push the desire down with sarcasm. 

"We're already gossiping. I could paint your nails if you'd like. You should probably choose a warm colour, a red or a rosy pink, because of your skin tone," she said. She didn't flinch from his sarcastic tone.

"Really? Rosy? You think I'd look good with rosy coloured fingers?" he held his hand out towards her so she could see his unpainted fingernails. She took his hand and held it between hers and his breathing stopped altogether. Any further comments died in his throat. Her skin was soft and warm and she traced his nails with her fingers. She was delicate and careful and it felt intimate. 

"You could do with a manicure, to be honest, pink or not," she said as she examined his hand. Her hair had fallen down around her and he couldn't see her face at all. He kept staring at the fall of dark brown hair.  There was a sound somewhere in the apartment and Will flinched like he was doing something immoral and Tessa turned toward the bedroom door. 

"Your date or mine?" she asked releasing his hand and sitting back up. 

Will had forgotten his date. Forgotten her completely. He'd forgotten just about everything but Tessa. The answer to the question though came pushing through the door to the bedroom before he could answer. Jem dropped a backpack and a grocery bag full of books on the floor with a heavy clunk that the downstairs neighbours probably did not appreciate. Jem looked up as he was pulling off his sweater and paused to frown at them. 

"We're about to start painting each other's nails," Will said. 

"Really?" Jem asked. 

"If there is nail polish anywhere in this apartment, yes," Tessa said. 

"I don't think there is unless you left some somewhere," Jem pulled off the sweater. In a lapse of his usual neatness,he left it on the floor with his books. His hair was all askew and he came over to sit on the edge of the bed beside Tessa, still looking perplexed but not upset. 

"I thought he was you," she said, "There was some cuddling, a lot of awkwardness, now we're having a middle school sleepover." 

Jem laughed at that and guilt rolled through Will. For both of them, it wasn't an issue that she was sitting in her pajamas in bed with him. Here he was having terrible thoughts every time she smiled and he didn't even register for her or for Jem. It was nice to be trusted and it left him feeling outside of this thing they had. No amount of telling himself that that was how it was meant to be helped. They were a couple, he wasn't supposed to be a part of it. 

"So have we got to the gossiping? Are we talking about Cecily's new boyfriend because I saw them tonight," Jem said and he climbed up onto the bed and pulled Tessa along with him. He sat up against the headboard beside Will and Tessa settled between them with her head on Jem's shoulder. She pressed her le against Will's beneath the tangled blankets. It might have been an accident but she didn't kick loose or pull away. 

"We are not talking about my sister and her cretin boyfriend or I will have to stab someone," Will said and his voice came out almost normal. He was pretty sure his heart beat should have been audible but he didn’t move either. 

Then they were talking about the cretin boyfriend and somehow the topic landed on some course Tessa was taking and Jem's project that had kept him at the library until after midnight and then bicycles and then dystopian novels. Will started to relax. His chest started to unknot. She was there and she smelled good but he could forget all the things he couldn't have when they were both here like this. 

This was easy. Will didn't have to worry about boundaries or behaving normally when he had them both. It didn't stir up guilt or doubt when she elbowed him for being ridiculous because Jem was reaching over to shove him as well. When she dozed off, he and Jem kept whispering over her head. 

In the morning, he wouldn't remember whose idea it was but someone suggested it and someone else agreed and when they half woke Tessa to ask she had just murmured, "Sure," before cuddling back down into the blankets and going back to sleep. 

In the morning, he woke up too warm but too comfortable to move. He woke up curled into her with his arm draped over her waist. Her body fit in against his like it had been designed for it. She had her head on Jem's shoulder and her hair was in Will's mouth but he didn't want to risk breaking the fragile spun glass perfection of this moment by moving. He let himself not care. 

His hand rested on Jem somewhere beyond her. They shared beds and they rolled together. Jem's warmth was familiar. Most days when they woke up having rolled in during sleep, they just pulled away and pretended they hadn't. 

Today, Will stayed where he was. 

"You awake?" Jem asked. 

"Yeah," Tessa said before Will could get up the courage to say anything. 

"He's still asleep?" Jem asked. 

"I think so," she said. 

"Are you ok with this? Do you want to get up?" he asked. 

"I'm fine," she said and they whispered to each other while Will pretended to sleep. His girlfriend had apparently slipped out earlier, Jem had heard the door. Jem had to phone his mother that afternoon. The conversation was the type of thing any couple might have first thing in the morning. It would have been normal if he hadn't been there. They behaved like he wasn't. 

Jem was playing with her hair which pulled it back out of Will's face. Tessa shifted just enough to press her back into Will's chest. It felt like they drifted in that moment for a long time. When Will had been very small he had liked falling asleep on the couch while his parents held their adult conversations over his head. This had that same feeling of warmth and security and home. He wasn’t really listening to the words they said, just the cadence of the voices. 

Finally, Jem reached past her to wake him up. He tapped Will's forehead until Will blinked up at him. He did not want to wake up. Waking up meant facing the fact that he was curled around not just anyone but Jem's girlfriend. 

This was very different from a child falling asleep on the couch. 

"We're going to make breakfast, do you want anything?" Jem asked. He had propped himself up on his elbow so that he could look over Tessa at Will. There was some wariness in his expression and Will realized that he wasn't the only one over the line here. This had been a conscious decision and now they were going to have to deal with it. 

Instead of something normal and polite that would have smoothed over the strangeness and opened the door to going back to normal, Will said, "Only if we can eat it in bed." 

Tessa let out a laugh and twisted around so she lay on her back and could look up at both of them. Her hair was a mess and Will almost pushed the strange detente into something entirely different by leaning down and kissing her. He stopped himself by looking back up at Jem and giving him the most unrepentant look he could manage. He was going to ruin everything but he did not want to go back to normal. He wanted to burn normal to the ground.

"I'll have breakfast in bed," Tessa said. 

"I'm not cooking while you two lie here and snuggle," Jem said. 

Before Will's anxiety could run away with that accusation, Tessa said, "No, you'll burn the bacon. We'll just bring it back here and eat it." 

Then she was pushing Jem back and making enough space to sit up. Will reluctantly followed her. When the strap of her shirt fell down her shoulder, he slid a finger under it and pushed it back into place. He wasn't looking forward to the return of real life. He wanted to hide in this limbo forever. 

He couldn't believe that there wasn't an expiry on this. Everyone was going to wake the rest of the way up and realize that he wasn't allowed to touch her. Jem wouldn't smile like he found it endearing anymore and he would discover that he had ruined every good thing in his life.  

It didn't happen immediately. 

In the kitchen, everyone still in pajamas, her hair hastily braided, Jem's a tangle, they bumped into each other cobbling breakfast together out of the paltry offerings of the fridge. Will had never enjoyed cooking anything so much in his life.  Tessa leaned in against Will's shoulder and Jem picked her up and moved her when she was in his way. They laughed and talked, moved around each other, and invaded each other's personal space. 

Will wasn't quite sure who was starting it but he kept finding himself against Jem. Sometimes, when there was no one else around, they touched more than either admitted the rest of the time. But this wasn't just side by side while watching a movie or shoving matches that ended up on the floor or even falling asleep in the same bed. This was Jem leaving his hand on Will's back while he talked to Tessa about pancake recipes. This was Will leaning his head into Jem's shoulder while he laughed.  They still didn't mention it but Tessa watched them in a way that said she saw it. 

They collapsed back into bed with a tray of food that was almost all properly cooked and a pot of coffee. They didn't bother with plates or serving. They ate off of the pile of pancakes, passed bacon and the rather paltry attempt at fruit salad back and forth. And they didn't break away from each other. Shoulders against shoulders, knees thrown over laps, hands holding hands, fingers in hair, holding things out on the ends of forks until someone else took it in their mouth. 

"Are we talking about this?" Jem asked at one point when the food was done but the coffee wasn't. 

"You're going to need a bigger bed," Tessa said and Will coughed. 

"So we're doing this again?" Jem asked. 

Tessa twisted until she was able to look up at Will and he stared back at her. She was gauging his reaction. He realized that she had been doing it since she took his hand and offered him a manicure the night before. Neither the crush he was aware of or the one that he wasn't had been as much of a secret as he had thought. 

Her eyes cut to Jem and Will followed her eyes. Jem, who was the picture of calm, looked rumpled and happy. His thoughts and feelings were hidden away though his hand was resting on Will's shoulder. As Tessa raised her eyebrows at him, it tightened just a fraction.  

"If you want," she said with a bit of a shrug. Her confidence had faded, nerves sneaking in around the edges. Will caught her face in his hand and turned her toward him. She held his eyes. 

"I could wake up like this every day," Will said and it got him a smile unlike any he had ever seen from her before. It was softer and shyer. Her eyes dropped away from his as it spread. She was blushing. His heart was beating too fast again but it wasn't with that same feeling of despair. He looked up at Jem and waited for him to smile first. Then Will leaned in and he kissed her. 

She pressed into it. Her chin lifted, her mouth opened and his tentative kiss went from curious to deep slowly but surely. Like sinking. A noise escaped him. It was something like a groan but it disappeared into her mouth as he cupped her face in his hand and kissed her harder. Her back was against Jem's chest. She had been slouching before he started and he pushed her back until she lay below him. Fingers brushed his hair back from his forehead and it took him a moment to realize that it wasn't her.

Will slowed down. Shivers ran down his spine from the fingers in his hair to places he was trying so hard not to think about. Tessa kissed back and her head was resting on Jem's thigh. Will pulled away from her to try and get his bearings but her little noise of protest was enough to pull him back down. Jem's fingers were in his hair, gentler than Tessa was but they held almost as much of his attention. Her mouth against his, her fingers on his hip and then up under the hem of his shirt and Jem stroking his hair. 

"Tell me what's okay, I can't tell anymore," Will murmured when the kiss broke apart but no one pulled away.

"How far?" Tessa asked. 

"Anywhere, as far as you want to," Will whispered back. 

She was pushing him up and Jem was there, his hand was on Will’s jaw for a moment as they knelt together in the bed. His attraction to Tessa he understood. The urge to lean in and press his mouth to Jem’s skin was a very different urge and it was one that felt strange and alien. Some voice in his head was telling him not to feel things like that but it was far too late for it to change anything. 

He was brave enough to admit he wanted it but he wasn’t brave enough to start it. Leaning close and pressing his mouth to Jem’s was too much. It was a dangerous thing. His heart was hammering in his ears as they moved around him. Tessa’s fingers on the skin of his lower back made him shudder and Jem was still holding his face with one hand and the other fisted in the fabric of his shirt. Jem looked past him and though he couldn’t see Tessa, he could imagine the look passing between them. 

“Did you two plan to seduce me?” he asked and if he hadn’t already been breathless, it might have come out as flippantly as he had intended. 

“Not explicitly,” Tessa said somewhere near his ear. 

“But you haven’t been subtle with the crush you have on my girlfriend,” Jem said and his thumb was tracing little patterns on Will’s jaw that were slowly driving him mad. He wasn’t supposed to want that. 

“She’s incredible and the only person I’ve ever met who can withstand comparison to you,” Will said. He'd opened a wound. Honesty was going to keep pouring out if he didn't stop it. He was going to end up with his heart in shards if he didn't stop. 

Tessa laughed and her fingers on his back traced up his spine as Jem smiled at him and leaned in so their foreheads were touching. It felt like an invitation but Will still wasn’t able to start the kiss. Will leaned forward, pushed in, tried to cuddle without seeming like he was cuddling in. Will gave up on the fantasy that he was going to stop before he got hurt. He was willing to shred his heart for this.  

Tessa stole his attention. She was back in is field of vision. Her fingers were on Will’s stomach now and his muscles tightened at the contact. That wasn’t the thing that pushed out everything else. She leaned into Jem and kissed up his neck. It made Jem’s fingers tighten and his eyes fall shut. 

Will’s self control was coming apart at the seams. Will’s everything was coming apart at the seams. This was impossible and nothing he’d even allowed himself to imagine had ever been like this. 

Reality was far far more than his darkest dreams had been. Will had refused to let himself entertain fantasies of Tessa but they had been there. They had all come with some imagined world where Jem admitted that she wasn’t right for him and that she would be much happier with Will. They had never come with Jem right there. He hadn't imagined Jem's head tipped back as she kissed wet lines up his neck with her fingers on Will’s skin. 

Just as he thought he had gathered enough courage for the kiss, Jem pushed him onto his back. He didn’t shove him over, he pressed him back. Jem's hand on his shoulder was holding him down. Not rough. But he couldn't have gotten up if he had wanted to. He didn't want to. He wanted to be right there.

Then the fingers on his waist were pushing up his shirt and it was being pulled away. Jem had, for just a moment, made him forget Tessa. She came roaring back into his attention as she leaned over him and her hair brushed against his chest. She pressed a kiss to his skin, right below his collar bone, then she moved down slowly, one kiss at a time from his sternum to his stomach to where a line of hair disappeared beneath his waistband. Then she kissed back up again, her hair trailing over him. 

He wasn’t sure which detail was pushing him farther into incoherence, the flutter of hair or the press of her mouth. He was hard and his skin was tingling with every touch. He had been aroused before, had taken girls to bed before, but he had never once been so lost in the sensations before. He had always felt in control. The loss of that control didn’t scare him like he might have imagined. It barely registered. A flicker of nerves before Jem leaned down over him and looked him in the eye with a half smile. 

“Do you want her to stop?” Jem asked. 

“Do you?” Will asked. 

“No,” Jem said glancing up to look at Tessa before looking back down at Will. 

“I don’t want to stop. I’d let the two of you tear me to bits if you wanted to but I trust that you won’t,” Will said. 

“And if I do?” Tessa asked and her voice came from somewhere near his waist. 

“Do what?”  he said. He had lost the thread of conversation as he either realized or imagined that he could feel her breath on his hip. 

“Tear you to pieces,” she said with a laugh. 

“I’ll thank you and come back tomorrow,” Will said. 

She laughed and dropped her face down to his stomach. A shudder rocked through him. If it hadn’t been for Jem pulling him back in with his fingers on his temple, he might have either come hard from that little contact or thrown up from the nerves. He didn’t know what the feeling was. He reached out and sank his fingers into Jem’s thigh and twisted the fabric of his pajamas between his fingers. 

Tessa was unbuttoning his pants and he looked down at her, overwhelmed with everything. He pulled away from Jem and reached for her. She sat up so he could catch her around the waist and he flipped her onto her back in the place that he had just left. Jem looked down at her with a different expression on his face. Curious and a little darker. 

She looked startled to be on her back. Startled to have the lead yanked back from her. Her partially open mouth, her wide eyes, the way she didn’t try to pull away from him. It was intoxicating. 

“I want you to come first,” he said to her. 

“Oh and you think you can make me?” she said. 

“Are you challenging me?” he asked with a laugh. 

“Maybe,” she said. 

Jem was watching them with a half smile on his face. Like he found it all very entertaining but wasn’t sure if he was allowed to say anything. Will lay down and she let out a sigh as his weight settled against her. He let his hand fall on Jem’s leg again but this time slid it up so he could feel the muscles of his thigh tighten. Will tore his eyes away from Tessa to look at Jem’s expression which was as caught between alarm and arousal as his was. 

“We’re going too fast,” Will as he pulled on Jem’s knee and said, “Come here.” 

“I’m not complaining,” Jem said. 

“You’re freaking out, I can see it. I’m freaking out. Come here,” Will said. 

Jem lay down beside them but didn’t touch. Tessa reached out and lay her hand on his face. Will had no idea how much of this had been discussed before they’d gotten here but he could see the silent conversation pass between them. It made him relax a little more and he could see Jem’s expression calm. Tessa’s body hadn’t relaxed yet but her expression was gentle. 

Will reached out and touched Jem’s shoulder until Jem turned to look at him. Then he shifted off of Tessa and pushed her into the space between them. Jem leaned in and kissed her and Will could finally feel her start to relax. He slipped his hand under her shirt and traced fingers along her stomach as she had done to him. Her stomach muscles tensed under his fingers but she didn’t break away from the kiss.  

He let his desire run away with his boundaries. His hand slid all the way along Tessa’s body and when it met Jem’s stomach he kept going under the shirt there. His hand slid up under Jem’s shirt and toward his chest. Jem had rolled into Tessa, leaning down over her and he pulled back from her.  Tessa muttered in protest as the kiss broke. Jem said Will’s name and Will looked up at him. 

“Can I touch you?” Will asked drawing his hand back. He hadn’t realized how far he had gone. 

“You want to?” Jem asked. 

“No, I spend every other night in you bed because I hate you,” Will said. 

“Do you two really sleep together that often?” Tessa asked. 

“If he’s not with you, yeah, I usually sleep in here,” Will said with a shrug. She looked at him and then looked between them. She seemed to be considering everything carefully. Will knew how strange their relationship was. He had known that it would need to be addressed some day. It was like walking a knife’s edge and someday they were going to fall off. He had been working on letting go in the months since Tessa had come into Jem’s life and started pulling him away more and more with each passing week. He had expected to wind up alone. 

“I want this to be about more than her,” Will said, the words tumbled out in a rush, “She’s incredible. I’ve never been more jealous of something than I am of your relationship with her. But I’ve always wanted you. I just didn’t realize I wanted you like this until you were here like this.” 

Jem looked between Tessa and Will for a moment. His expression confused more than anything else and the bottom of Will’s stomach dropped out. He had ruined it. He had said something unforgivable. He had taken something strange and perfect and made it simply weird. He closed his eyes. He started formulating apologies. Maybe there was still some piece of the friendship that could be saved if he said the right thing now. 

The mouth on his was soft. It surprised him, jerked him back into the moment. He opened his eyes to Jem’s dark hair and the arch of his cheekbone and his mouth fell open in surprise. Jem took that as an invitation. His tongue slid into Will’s mouth and Will responded in a clumsy rush. He had forgotten for a moment how to kiss but a moment later the kiss went from tentative to mind blowing. Jem’s mouth moved against him and he kissed hard. Pushy and dominant and all tongue and pressure. When he bit down on Will’s lip, Will had to pull away or lose himself. 

Tessa still lay between them and she was looking up with an incredulous look on her face. Not disgust or even surprise. Jem smiled at Will and then dropped down to kiss her just as hard. She gasped as he pressed down against her. His jaw moved as he pulled her tongue into his mouth and Will watched his hand close on her breast through her shirt tightly enough that it must have hurt. She arched into it and murmured little sounds of encouragement. 

Will slid lower and started pulling off her pants. She was already wet as he pulled off her panties. She lifted her hips for him and settled back with her knees wide. He glanced up at them before settling between her thighs. Neither of them looked at him. 

“Do you still think you can keep the orgasm back?” Will asked her as he stroked her stomach just above her sex. She shivered but it didn’t have that same tension to it. Will was still nervous but it had gone from nausea and anxiety to a flutter that was more excitement than terror. 

“It only counts if you can make me scream,” she said without pulling all the way back from Jem’s mouth. 

“Does she scream?” Will asked. 

“Sometimes,” Jem said, “But she’s good at fighting it back down when she wants to.” 

Will wanted desperately to ask them what kinds of sex games they were playing where this was something they knew. Tessa spread her knees a little wider and distracted him from the question. She shifted her hips to push her body up so it was completely exposed. She was comfortable. Her confidence smoothed out any last anxiety that had been lingering in the pit of his stomach. He pressed a kiss to one thigh and then the other before moving lower.

He pressed his mouth against her and she murmured as he made contact. He started slow. This he was good at. She was hot and wet and more than ready. Going slow was a kind of torture. The little noises that escaped from her as Jem sucked at her neck and played with her breasts, told him he was doing a good job of it. He went slow for a long time, long licks, not touching certain places, nuzzling and holding her down with his forearm across her hips. 

When he did fall on the right place, he did it hard and fast and she caught the yelp that escaped her with a hand. Without being told Jem grabbed her hands and held them above her head. She twisted against the two of them, Jem at her wrists, Will at her waist, but didn’t ask to be released. 

“Cheater,” Will muttered and then fell back on her with a smile. 

She clamped her mouth shut as he alternated between sucking hard and licking. She was fighting the release and Will had never done this before. It was one of the most erotic things he had ever seen. Her eyes squeezed shut, her legs never still and held apart, her face flushed and her breathing uneven. 

He let one of his legs go to slide two fingers inside her. He pushed up and rubbed hard against that place inside her while not letting up the suction on her clit. She came hard not long after, her body shuddering and the promised scream escaping. 

He didn’t stop. He had gotten her there and he held her there. She thrashed and moaned and he kept going until she screamed again. Then he climbed her body and lay down on top of her with his face buried in her throat. The hair at the back of her neck was damp with sweat and her muscles were still shaking. He held her close and leaned into Jem who was right beside her. 

“What do I win?” he asked her in a low voice. 

“Anything, for that, I’d give you anything you asked for,” she said. 

“She means that but if you hurt her, I will never forgive you,” Jem said with a laugh. 

"I wouldn't hurt her," Will said. He turned to look at Jem. Tessa's breathing was returning to normal but Will wasn't any calmer. He reached for Jem and pushed his shirt up because he needed more skin to touch. There wasn't much clothing left but he wanted the rest of it gone. Jem pulled back and there was some fumbling as too many people with their attention scattered in too many places tried to get the rest of the clothing off. Somewhere along the line, Jem got his mouth on Will's neck and for a few moments everything ground to a silent halt as he kissed and sucked hard enough to leave marks. 

Will didn't stop him. He just leaned his head back to give him more room and pulled Tessa in closer so he could feel all that skin against hi body. Jem was thin and hard, bone and muscle under skin. Tessa was drawn in softer lines but keeping straight which piece belonged to which person was getting more difficult. 

"I know what I want, I want you on top," Will said to Tessa and she inhaled and bit her lip before nodding. Will did not usually choose that but he left that detail out. He had liked feeling like he had given up control when they'd had him on his back the last time and he wanted that feeling again. He wanted the feeling of throwing himself into something without thinking about where he was going to land or what it was going to be like to come down. It was like falling and he just had to trust it wouldn’t turn out he was falling instead.

Before he lay back down he ran his hand all the way down Jem's chest and kept going. Jem was tall and broad shouldered but thin and his hips were narrow. Will let his hand rest where he could feel the bone beneath the skin. He started with his fingers and Jem leaned into the touch. This he was not good at, this was uncharted territory. He knew what he liked but he didn't have any idea how to begin translating that to another person. Tessa was leaning into him and watched without participating. Her one arm was around Will's shoulder and her other hand was on Jem's chest. 

"How far have you ever gone with a guy?" Tessa asked in a whisper.  

"Earlier this morning I kissed one," Will said. 

“He’s a good kisser,” Jem said. 

“For a boy or in general?” Tessa asked. 

“My experience on the matter is not exactly extensive,” Jem admitted. 

“But more than this morning,” Will said. 

“Not by much,” Jem said with a bit of a laugh, “It was high school and I’d never drank before.” 

The conversation happened without anyone pulling away. Will knew he was teasing with how gentle he was being. He was mesmerized by the little expressions crossing Jem’s face. A tiny frown between his eyebrows, his mouth not fully closed, sometimes his eyes falling shut for just a moment even as he talked. Jem’s walls were all the way down, every thought, every reaction played out across his face. Will couldn’t read them all but he committed them all to memory like it was a language he could learn if he studied.  

"You should expand your horizons,” Tessa said and a part of Will wanted to make a joke about her kissing girls but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t really like the idea of having anyone else involved. 

“Lie down," Tessa said to Jem who raised his eyebrows but did as he was bid without question. Jem was a little more self conscious lying down than Tessa had been. Tessa pulled Will down with her. 

He knew what she had planned before she started. Being that close to it brought up that little voice that told him he wasn't allowed to want things like this. He ignored it and leaned in against one of Jem's bent knees to watch her. She wrapped her hand at the base of his cock and ran her tongue up and down the length of him until she had decided he was hard enough to start sucking. 

Will pet her hair and alternated between watching the cock disappear into her mouth and watching Jem's expression as it happened. He barely noticed when she pulled his hand in and put it where her's had been. She didn't stop and he rubbed while she kept moving up and down slow and even. When Will looked up again, Jem was watching him. His expression was tight. 

"Wait, lemme up, not ready for it to happen that fast," Jem half slurred the words. 

Following some language of gestures and shared time together, Jem and Tessa readjusted on the bed until somehow Will ended up being the one lying back with a girl between his knees. He was a little confused as to how it had happened but she looked up at him and smiled and he stopped thinking about everything else. At least until her mouth fell open and her eyes fell shut and he realized where Jem had gone. 

He was behind her and her back arched as he did something that Will could imagine but couldn't see. He watched Jem's hand slide up her back and how she pressed up into the touch. She gasped and adjusted her knees to give him better access. For a moment her cheek was against Will's inner thigh. 

After she had relaxed into it and Jem had found a long slow rhythm that pressed her forward and pulled her back, she ran her tongue up the underside of Will’s cock. He could feel the movement through her. Her mouth was warm and gentle even when Jem pushed her forward harder and she wasn’t the one in control. Will's head spun but he forced himself not to just fall back and fall apart. He lasted longer than he thought he would but it still took him by surprise. He had thought he could hold onto it longer than that. He came in her mouth and it startled them both. 

Will pulled her up so he could kiss her. Jem still held her hips but she was kneeling up to meet Will. Her back was a long curve and Will traced down it until his hand found Jem’s. Jem hadn’t stopped and Will pushed Tessa the rest of the way up so her back was against Jem’s chest. It couldn’t have been comfortable but he only needed a moment and she had looped her arms around Will’s neck to brace herself. 

Jem leaned forward and Will pressed against Tessa as he met the kiss. Jem went a little harder as he deepened the kiss. Tessa groaned and pressed her face into Will’s neck. She was leaning on him and if he pulled away she was going to fall forward. He held her close and threaded his fingers through the hair at the base of her neck. 

“Can I go harder?” Jem said turning his face from Will’s mouth to whisper in her ear. 

“Yes, please, yes,” she told him and her fingers tightened on Will’s shoulders before Jem did anything different. A moment later Will understood why. Jem had meant it. His fingers bit into her hips and he pushed her forward against Will hard and fast. She didn’t scream but a cry escaped her and Will held her a little closer as he watched Jem’s face. They were forehead to forehead, Will could feel his breath on his cheek. Jem was leaning forward over Tessa and Will kissed whoever he could reach where ever he could reach. Tessa’s temple and Jem’s mouth and Tessa’s jaw and Jem’s closed eyes. He tried to be gentle to balance out what was happening between them. 

When Jem came, he leaned in hard and unbalanced all three of them. They collapsed into a pile. Will pressed a kiss to Tessa’s forehead and reached out to run his fingers through Jem’s hair. He wormed his way in closer, tangling his legs more closely with theirs. They lay like that until everyone’s breathing had come back down to normal. Skin on skin and soft voices and Tessa giggling. It was this soft edged laugh that didn’t seem to have to do with whether not anything was funny. A happy sound that Will was falling in love with.  

“Are you done?” Tessa asked. 

“Me?” Will had his lips against her hair and was trailing his fingers over any skin he could reach, his or hers. 

“You had asked me to be on top,” she said with another laugh, this one a little more self-conscious. Will grinned down at her and she held that look with a blush climbing up her cheeks. Jem was half asleep behind her but he blinked his eyes open all the way to watch the conversation.

“Doesn’t have to be now,” he said.

“But it could be,” she said. 

  
"You are one of those insatiable sex kitten kind of girls aren't you?" Will said, "I would not have expected that." 

She let out a laugh then and the blush went from pink across her cheeks to scarlet before she rolled into him and buried her face in his chest. He held her in a hug that he hoped was reassuring and started to apologize but she was still laughing. 

"What would you have expected?" she asked once she'd gotten a handle on her reaction. 

"Vanilla, sweet and tentative, maybe willing to explore a little bit but only with encouragement," Will said. 

"That's about where she started," Jem said and Tessa made an embarrassed noise and reached out to shove him in the chest without lifting her head from Will's shoulder. Jem caught her hand and held her wrists back behind her to illustrate the point, "She's kinkier these days." She struggled against the hold but that didn't serve to make her look any more innocent. The little implication there that she had been a virgin before she met Jem made Will smile. 

"Give me my hand back, you jerk," she said with mock sternness. Jem let go of her and leaned in to kiss her on the shoulder. He kissed a line across her back and then up to her neck while his hands wandered over her. Will watched his hands on her body. His skin was darker, a golden brown where hers was a pale pink. 

"He's a corrupting force, get out while there is still time. I swear I was sweet and virginal once," Tessa told Will. 

"You're still sweet," Jem told her licking her neck and making her shiver. 

"I'm not going anywhere. My reputation is far to shiny and pure, I need some corrupting," Will said.  

"Shiny and pure? The boy who half of campus wants and almost as many claim to have had? You take girls to bed and then break their hearts," Tessa said. 

"I try not to but every time, over and over, they aren't you and none of those relationships can last because I don't want anyone else. None of them are you," Will said. 

Tessa tilted her face up to him and her expression was different. Not teasing or challenging or carefully watching to see if she'd crossed the line. She looked up at him with awe on her face and if he hadn't already been impossibly and irrevocably in love, that look would have done it. 

"You're Jem's and that put you utterly out of reach but it didn't help anyone compare. I could be perfectly happy never speaking to anyone on this campus that isn't you and Jem," Will caught Jem's expression. It was far more serious than anything that had come before. Jem started to pull back, to sit up and Tessa turned an alarmed expression on him. Will reached out and grabbed his wrist before he could get any farther away. 

"Where are you going?" Tessa asked and the attempt to make her voice sound normal made her discomfort all the more obvious. 

"I'm just going to the bathroom, you two take a minute," Jem said with a look between them. 

"I don't want a minute," Tessa said with more force than Will had been expecting to come from her. She had one hand still on Will and she pressed into his chest for a second before she said the next part, "If you make it into that, I would choose you over everything." 

"You're the one that wanted him," Jem said. 

"I still do," she said, "But you are behaving as though you are going to walk away from me James and I will never choose anything where that happens. Did you want this to be a one time thing, without any feelings involved?" 

"Tess," Jem started and she was looping her arms around his neck and pulling him back in. Will kept hold of his hand and laced their fingers together because he desperately didn't want to be separate from this conversation. He wasn't sure he could survive this being a one time thing but he also didn't think he'd be able to survive ruining what they had between them. He caught Tessa as she pulled Jem down on top of her. He came willingly and squeezed Will's fingers as he settled in against her body. 

"I love you both too much to go anywhere," Jem promised. 

He threw the word love around with ease and Will's heart stuttered at it. They were best friends and had been for a long time. Love was not the wrong word but the way Jem said it, the way it fell over both of them made the word mean something different. Not friendship and affection. Love. The kind of love they wrote about in stories. Will was holding on too tightly, his fingers tight around Jem's and his other arm sliding down to lock around Tessa's waist. He didn't say anything but he didn't want to let them go. 

"I won't go anywhere, no matter what you want to him," Jem told her and it broke the tension. She started to laugh again. Will had been close to girls before but he wasn't sure he had ever felt someone laugh up close as often as he had felt it from Tessa. Her laughter was a physical thing he felt through his body.

She pulled Jem in and kissed him. It was deep and hard and Will found himself fascinated by the way their mouths moved. He reached out to trace Jem's jaw as it moved against her. Jem glanced up at him for a moment before Tessa pulled her back to him. 

He could have watched them for hours but his roaming hands distracted them enough that Tessa eventually flipped back to him and swung a knee up over his waist. He lay back below her as desire ran through him. Jem moved in to fill the space she had left so Will had her above him and Jem pressed in against his side. She sat over his waist and he forced himself to give up control. He could have grabbed her hips and put her where he wanted her but he didn't. Her thighs touched his sides and that brush of skin set him on fire all over again and he ran his hands up her legs. 

Jem pushed her back and then it was his hand that put Will's cock at her entrance. Tessa groaned as she slid down and he disappeared inside her. She started to collapse forward and Jem put the flat of his palm against her stomach. It was very gentle but it kept her sitting up when she clearly wanted to collapse. Will felt the muscles inside her tighten and release as she made room for him and slid the rest of the way down. 

Jem kept her sitting up with that hand on her stomach. She moved against him, awkwardly at first and then with more and more fluidity. The movement was like rocking. Her body barely rising off of his as her hips rolled. Will's eyes fell shut and he let the skin against his be all he could feel. Jem against his side, Tessa over her and around him. When Jem finally let her collapse forward and press against him, he let the moment pull him over and down. 

It was a little like drowning in Jem's angles and Tessa's curves and hair falling all around him and that soft but unavoidable feeling of rolling hips and narrow exploring fingers. He kept his hands flat to skin. Tessa's back, Jem's hip, Tessa's arms, Jem's chest. Anything he could touch. He wasn't trying. He let her take control and she used it go slowly and carefully. Will could have kept going like this for a long time. He both wanted her to try for forever and to flip her over and finish it fast. 

Jem's hand slipped between their bodies. Will shivered but he wasn't the target. Jem leaned in and whispered into Tessa's ear. Something about the way he took control without shaking her confidence made Will's every muscle tighten. 

"If I do this, can you keep going?" Jem asked.

She tensed at whatever 'this' entailed. Her stomach tensed against his and the muscles inside her contracted enough that Will had to squeeze his eyes shut to reign in his own reactions. She gasped and groaned and cuddled in tighter. 

"Can you?" Jem asked again. 

"Yeah," she muttered. 

She was lying but no one cared. Will could feel Jem's fingers moving as she attempted to keep up her rocking. She was holding onto Will and he caught her face and turned it up for a kiss. Their lips had just touched when Jem started to rub harder. She cried out into Will's mouth so he kissed her harder. Jem didn't slow and Will started pushing up to meet her as her rhythm fell apart. She came first. Jem made sure she came first. 

She looked down at Will, her expression hazy. He flipped her over with every intention of finishing hard and fast but the hazy expression and her partially open mouth and the way she frowned up at him when she found herself flat on her back made him reconsider. For all the jokes earlier, she did look innocent and overwhelmed and he couldn't be anything but gentle when she was watching him like that. He sank back into her and held her cheek in one palm. She met his eyes and lifted her chin for a kiss. Even that he kept gentle and careful. 

He didn't stop and Jem was there too but he had gentled as well, taking Will's lead or perhaps he saw the same vulnerability in her that Will could. Jem kissed her forehead and her neck and his fingers were in her hair as she bit her lip and shifted with Will. They didn't know each other well enough to match up their thrusts but she didn't lie still and take it. She shifted and murmured and pulled him in as they moved together. 

He didn’t last much longer, even slow and gentle he didn’t last. Tessa kept running her hand up and down his back. Every movement sent little aftershocks of the orgasm up through her, dragging it out. Will held her face and watched each aftershock make her eyes fall shut and her mouth drop open. She didn’t come again before he did but she cried out again when he pressed into her and rode out the orgasm as deep inside her as he could manage. 

“Again?” Jem asked her which made her laugh. 

“If you two want anything else, you’re only option is each other, I can’t breathe anymore,” she said into Will’s neck. Jem gave Will a smile and then kissed him. Pulled him in over her and kissed him like he was air. The idea of what being Jem's only option might might shot through Will but he was as worn out as Tessa was. He let the kiss go on for a long time before he shoved Jem off and pleaded exhaustion. 

They lay half asleep in the late morning sunshine, anything that should have been done left forgotten. Tessa liked to run her fingers through hair and no one minded that Will kept letting his hands wander over skin. Jem hummed little tunes and whispered thing that made Tessa laugh from where he lay with his head on her shoulder. Will pressed kisses to any piece of skin he got close enough to to reach. 

“Promise me something,” Will said in a moment of quiet that stretched and purred around them. He propped himself up to look down at the tangle of limbs and blankets and only Tessa looked up at him. 

“What’s that?” Jem asked. 

“Promise me that this isn’t some one time experiment that we will all pretend never happened tomorrow,” he said.

“What happened? What are we pretending didn’t happen? Did something interesting happen?” Jem asked and cut his eyes up to look at Will with just the smallest of smiles playing around his lips. 

“I should push you and your sarcasm right out of bed,” Will said. Jem let a slow, smile spread across his mouth and Will had to bite back a defensive comment. He had always had an academic understanding that Jem was attractive. It wasn’t surprising that girls like Tessa would notice him but he’d never let himself think that thought all the way through. He’d never let himself truly notice that Jem’s low lip was fuller than the top or the way his cheek creased when that crooked smile crept out.  He tried to ignore it now but noticing it was taking up almost all of his thoughts. 

“This isn’t an mistake,” Tessa said interrupting his thoughts of both violence and things his body was not prepared to do again this soon. He looked back at her to find her gaze steady and soft. He nodded and let her pull him back in close. She pressed a kiss to his temple and he let himself melt into it as she whispered, “Stay, Will, we both want you to stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There should be some mention of safe sex in this. There really should be condoms or at least a discussion of birth control but weaving that in was going to push it to close to 15000 words and it is already long enough.


	3. You Can Come With Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Full Circle deleted scene. As smut it makes sense on its own but it no longer fits in the plot the way the plot is structured. Even if I get back o writing FC, I don't think this scene would make it back in.

"What are you two planning?" Will asked. 

"What to do once all this business with Mortmain is over," Jem said. 

"Ah, and the plans?" he asked. 

"Paris, I think," Jem said glancing at Tessa as though to check that she was on the same page with him. She saw him look up at her but her attention was on Will. Will's smile faltered. It had been spreading into something warm and suggestive and utterly happy and it stopped dead. His eyebrows twitched together but it wasn't actually a frown. Almost like he wasn't sure if he were allowed to frown. 

"Paris," he said. 

"Yeah, Ragnor has been bullied into providing introductions to Tessa's old friends there. We should be able to find someone to help build up enough of a reputation to get contracts back here," Jem said. 

"You could rejoin the Clave," Will said. He came across the room and sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. Tessa had notes scribbled on loose leaf paper around her. The bed was a riot of their debates and discussions and plans. 

"I could," Jem agreed. He crossed the space Will had left between them to pull Will in so their foreheads touched, "But that would complicate things for both of you. My identity is a complicated mess and with Wayland in charge of the Clave, there will be enough trouble getting them to accept Tessa without her older self running about and being unconventional." 

"Are you suggesting that I would scare the Clave off?" Tessa asked with a grin. She was dressed in pants and a shirt she had pulled out of an old wardrobe full of men’s clothing meant for visiting Shadowhunters. The shirt was too big and needed rolled to her elbows to allow her to use her hands but the trousers gave her enough range of movement to sit up on the bed with her feet tucked in. Jem's eyes cut to her but he didn't pull away from Will. Tessa could see Will lean in but his hands stayed on the blanket. He didn't reach for Jem, didn't touch him back. 

"I'm not sure I could be a soldier again," Jem admitted. 

Tessa gathered up her papers and dropped them in a heap on the bedside table before coming over to lean against Will's other side. Held there between the two of them, he was calmer. Will needed physical contact in a way that always made her wonder how he had survived those years of the curse without anyone to hold. He touched and held on more than she had expected before she had married him. She could still remember how long it had taken to adjust to waking up held tight against another person. Jem touched almost as much and it had been like coming home to wake up with his arms around her. 

"We're not leaving you behind," she said into Will's ear. 

"No," Jem said pulling back and pulling everyone's attention to him, "Is that what you're upset about? Will, it'll be two weeks. You can come. We'll do whatever it is that people do in Paris in 1878 and then come back." 

"You aren't staying here, though, are you?" Will said. 

"Not in the Institute, it's too much of an imposition," Jem said at the same time Tessa said, "It's too many memories. We need someplace to make our own." 

"But you can be part of that," Jem said picking up the end of her sentence and carrying it forward. He was intense and very close to Will as he spoke. Will laughed and Jem slid his hands up Will's neck to hold onto him and tilt his face up. 

"I'm terribly difficult to live with, you probably don't want me to have an open invitation to your home," Will said and he was almost speaking into Jem's mouth. Jem's smile spread wider. 

Will pressed up out of his sitting position and into Jem who wasn't in the least prepared for it. He let out a laugh as he lost his balance and tumbled backwards. He lay flat on his back and Will leaned down over him, a hand braced on the blanket beside his head. Jem turned his head and pressed  kiss to Will's wrist. Will blinked and smiled. While he was distracted by the kiss, Jem kicked him off balance and then flipped him. It happened fast. The movement more at home in a sparring match than a bed room. Will and grabbed a fistful of Jem’s shirt which kept him too close to squirm away. 

"Do you have anything you need to be doing?" Jem asked. 

"No," Will said. 

"Can I take off all your clothes or are you too proper here for things like that?" Jem asked. 

"Fuck proper," Will said without hesitation and Tessa laughed. She had been sitting back and just watching them. Being seduced by Jem was one thing but watching him do it to someone else was quite another. A part of her would have been content just to watch it happen but when she laughed, Will looked up at her with a question in his eyes and she couldn’t stay away from that expression.

As they rather gracelessly found their way higher on the bed, she settled herself at Will's side and pushed her fingers into his hair. He leaned into her and she cuddled close enough to press her lips to his neck. Jem was undoing buttons. Will was dressed properly, a jacket and waistcoat and a crisp white shirt. He was laying back and Jem didn't bother to try and pull the clothing off, he just opened it layer by layer until he could run his hands over skin. 

Will was flushed and the entire scene made him look utterly debauched. For all the moments where he had seemed the bad angel, something about this moment made him look like a nice boy led astray. She slid herself in tighter to his side and pet his hair while Jem ran fingers over his stomach and chest. Jem's fingers were narrow and just a few shades darker than Will's skin. The runes across his knuckles reminded her of all he had lost once. She reached out and pushed that shock of silver hair away from his face and he smiled at her but even she couldn’t pull his attention entirely from Will. 

He ran his hands over Will's stomach and up the lines of muscle on his chest. He went slow. Tessa settled back in to playing with Will’s hair and watched his expressions as Jem played with his skin. He bit his lip as Jem pressed a kiss to his stomach just above his pants. He shivered as fingers traced up his stomach and Jem trailed kisses up to his collarbone and then back down. 

Tessa couldn’t stay out of the way. Her hands wandered of their own accord. Jem’s hair and his shoulders when he was close enough, Will’s curls and his chest when Jem was lower. They were quiet except for the little sighs that escaped from Will. 

When Jem started unbuttoning his pants, Will slipped his arm under Tessa and grabbed hold of her. He pulled her in tight to his side like he was bracing himself for whatever Jem was going to do. She settled in where she was put. She caught Will’s nearer knee between her legs once it was free of the clothing so it was out of Jem’s way. He held on a little tighter to her waist. She couldn’t tell if it was passion or if he was overwhelmed. 

“Are you ok?” she asked in his ear and he nodded before he turned his face in and caught her in a kiss. She kissed him back with all the strength he did. 

“This will never be normal,” he muttered. 

“Normal isn’t worth much,” Jem told him. 

“I’d rather have this than normal,” Tessa said. 

Jem did something that Tessa couldn’t see that made Will jump and turn his attention back. Tessa kept her face close to Will’s as she looked down at Jem. He very briefly met her eye with a bit of a smirk before turning his attention back to Will. He held Will’s cock in one hand and his other was palm down on Will’s stomach. He did that to her too. He was strong enough to hold her down with his hand there and she wanted to know if he could do the same to Will. 

Jem paused, very obvious in his intention but not actually starting. His mouth was just partially open and there was a half smile on his lips as he watched Will. Will stared back, a little bit dumbfounded by the experience and the sensation and probably the way he was being held down. 

“I don’t want normal. I don’t care about respectable or proper, I want you, I want this,” Will said. 

Jem flashed him a quick grin and then closed his mouth over Will’s cock. Tessa leaned her head against Will, whose whole body had reacted to the sensation, and watched. She watched the way the muscles in Will’s stomach tightened with the sensation and the way Jem’s cheeks pulled in as he sucked. Jem sucked hard and moved slowly down. When his mouth had reached his own hand, he pulled back and licked his lips. Will watched him with a scattered expression. Jem grinned again and started over, pushing lower until it was his throat that stopped him. 

“You can do that,” Jem said to Tessa. 

“It’s not easy,” she said. 

“Do what?” Will asked in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. 

“Take it all the way in,” Jem said, then to Tessa, “Show me.” 

She laughed and but her lip but untangled herself from Will to go join Jem between his legs. His eyes followed her. She settled in close to Jem and paused to kiss him. Will made a little noise that was just a little bit of a protest and a little bit of a plea. Tessa licked him, already slick from what Jem had been doing and then took him all the way down. She swallowed past that point her body tried to keep him out and slid down until her nose bumped into his stomach before pulling back and sucking in air. 

They were both watching her with a kind of interest that bordered on hunger. She smiled and pressed  her face into Will’s thigh. She had first pushed past that point of resistance by accident - pushing harder than she needed to while Will - much older than he was now - had leaned in and it had hurt as it had pushed in far enough to cut off her breathing. She learned how to do it without it hurting since and she didn’t really think about it until they were both watching her like that. 

She managed to talk Jem through it though he came up coughing and on the brink of gagging while she laughed. It brought out something competitive in him and he did it again, and then again until he could do it without it making him flinch. Tessa didn’t go back to lie beside Will. She leaned her head against his thigh and watched until Jem pulled back and looked at her and she took over from him. 

Will lasted long enough for them to find a pattern of taking turns. Whenever she was the one with Will in her mouth, Jem pressed kisses down her neck. Without her to hold onto, Will kept reaching down to touch hair or skin and Jem laced their fingers together so that Will had something to grab on to. 

Will came hard in Jem’s mouth. Jem looked a little startled by it and Tessa pulled his chin over to kiss him before the taste was gone from his mouth. She laid her head down on Will’s stomach and played with the edge of the waistcoat he was still wearing. He stroked her hair and she watched Jem who was smiling and leaning against Will’s knee. 

“Lie down over him,” Jem said to her once everyone was breathing evenly again. 

“I think he needs a minute,” Tessa said. 

“I really do,” Will’s voice was still unsteady. 

“He doesn’t have to do anything for this. Lie down with him and I’ll do everything else,” Jem said. 

Pulling off the rest of the clothing was a jumble of hands. She was tugging at Jem’s buttons and someone had slid their hands up under the shirt she wore but she wasn’t sure who. Once it was all gone, she had a moment of self consciousness that she buried in Will’s neck. He gathered her and rolled them backwards onto the bed. She smiled at him and could feel herself blushing though she wasn’t entirely sure why. 

“Are you aware of how beautiful you are?” Will asked her. 

“Yes but I like to hear you say it,” she said and Jem laughed from behind her, his hands were on her back and if she wasn’t held so tightly she would have turned to look at him. 

She set her knees on either side of his hips and could feel him soft and spent between them. He held her close, pulling her against him as she found a position that would work for what Jem had planned. She was tight to his body and when she kissed him everything else was gone. It was just Will. Will’s heart rate still just a little too fast, his skin warm, his arms strong enough to hold her wherever he wanted her and gentle enough to make her feel utterly safe while he did. 

Jem pulled her attention back from the kiss, though she didn’t break away from Will. There where hands on her hips and she felt the touch of his hip against her bottom before she felt him in more intimate places. He was slow and insistent as he slid inside her. She was tighter than she had expected to be and it nearly hurt. It must have been on her face because it was Will who said, “Whatever you’re doing, be gentler.”

Jem pulled out and then pushed back in a little at a time. It was almost teasing. She kissed Will and pushed back against Jem until he was as far inside as he could be. Slow and long and exquisite. She was completely surrounded and it left her disoriented and secure all at once. It was perfect and frustrating and she wanted more than Jem was giving her. 

“You don’t need to be that gentle,” she said more into Will’s mouth than to Jem but he heard her and leaned in a little harder on the next thrust and she gasped. 

Will tightened his hold. His arm around her waist went from protective to solid. She was held flush to his stomach and almost immobile as Jem moved behind her. Will didn’t let go when Jem sped up. He wasn’t gentle behind her but Will was almost impossible gentle below her. Excepting the iron hold around her waist that kept her body from shaking out of his grasp as Jem slammed against her, Will was gentle. Jem grabbed hold of her hips from behind, his fingers biting like he wanted to leave bruises and Will pet her hair and kissed her softly over and over each time one of Jem’s thrusts made her mouth fall open. 

She was caught there between them. It was too warm and she was starting to lose herself in sweat slicked skin and touches she could no longer connect to only one person. Was the hand that slid down her back Will’s as he pulled her against him or Jem’s pushing down? Did the change in depth come from Will pulling her in tighter or was Jem leaning against her or had she done that herself? 

She was murmuring and moaning and Will, it must have been Will, was petting her hair back from her face as she pressed against his neck and arched her back to push closer to Jem. His fingers slid down around her though there was little space between her body and Will’s and found the right spot to push her over the edge she had been hovering at. She didn’t scream. She smothered the noise she couldn’t stop against Will’s throat as he held her closer. 

It wasn’t done but he slowed down then after he had left her shaking. He didn’t pull away but the movements calmed. He was long and he went slow so she could feel every bit of every stroke. She had a moment of clarity where each sensation isolated instead of blurred. The near pain of him reaching as far into her as it was possible to be. 

There was Will’s careful hand on the side of her face and his lips against her forehead. Jem’s hips tight against her as he pushed inside and then the loss of that contact as he pulled away again. The hand in the middle of her back that must have been Jem’s. Breath on her neck. Sheets dragging against her legs as she tried to adjust where her knees were. 

She came again. This time, Will’s hand caught the scream before it escaped. Jem was close behind her this time. She screamed and he thrust harder and faster before collapsing into her. They all tumbled into the bed, sweaty and sated and breathing like they’d run a marathon. 

Will rolled her over and she realized that though she was almost incoherent already, he was hard again. She met his eyes and the piece of her that just wanted to rest, that wanted to tell him it was too much changed course. She held his gaze as she settled back for him, spreading her knees and pulling him down until he slid inside her. Her back arched at just the entrance. Her skin hummed with sensation and she tried to breathe evenly but then Jem curled over into them and pressed his lips to her ear, she lost even that much control. 

A fantasy crossed her mind, one where this lasted forever. A brief bit of imagining what it would be like to be passed back and forth while one recovered and the other pushed deep inside her. Just the thought bade her shudder. 

She grabbed hold of Will who lay over her and pressed down against her in a thrust that wasn’t nearly as intentioned as Jem’s had been. Will was enthusiasm and care but he was still new to this. Jem knew how to adjust angles and paid close attention. He could decide when she came just by changing the way his hips moved. She pulled Will in to a kiss and pressed on his hip. He responded to her hand and the angle changed and she sighed. 

She held onto Will and was aware of Jem whispering other instructions into his ear. Will rolled his hips into her instead of pulling back and pressing in and she struggled and groaned. Jem laughed very near her face and she turned to him and pulled him in to a kiss. She wasn’t sure she remembered how to talk. He kissed her back as Will kept rolling into her and sliding out. His gentleness wasn’t gone but she’d asked Jem not too be too gentle and he seemed to be taking that to heart as well. 

Her attention spun in the wash of sensation and skin and the way voices and skin all slid together. Everything was blurred together in a way that made it hard to even identify which piece of skin belonged to her and which to someone else. Her hands wandered, petting and stroking. She licked at sweat and sucked on lips when they were close enough. 

Will pushed her to another orgasm and she wasn’t able to stop the noise that pulled out of her. Jem caught it in a kiss and she cried out against his mouth, kissing him and letting out little gasps as Will rubbed over the same place over and over. The orgasm was more violent than the ones that had come before. 

Lifetimes ago, her reaction had scared Will into thinking he had hurt her but here, with Jem and her awareness of her own body, he didn’t hesitate. She couldn’t come down, the orgasm rolled in an out but the wave would break. He kept going. Gentler now but insistent. She twisted and murmured, unsure if she wanted to be closer or if she needed space. 

She was lost. Jem was there, talking in her ear and smiling against her cheek because of course he would like watching Will take her like this. Will was everywhere around her, dragging her in and pulling her down. His self control snapped and he went from deep and rolling to the kind of thrusts that were punishing against her already over sensitized body. It was too much and he was too strong and when he came hard and deep inside her body she cried out his name. 

She drifted in the aftermath of it all as Will rolled far enough away that she could breathe. She reached for Jem and he was there on the other side of Will and he laced his fingers with hers. Their hands rested on Will’s hip and he kissed Tessa on the forehead in a way that was just as, if not more intimate, than what they had just been doing. 

“If we get a flat somewhere, will we ever do anything but this?” Will asked. 

“Yes, but not much, we would do a lot of this,” Jem said. 

“We’ve spent the last five years doing not much of anything but this,” Tessa said with a smile. 

“We do other things,” Jem said. 

“Yeah, a little bit,” she said. 

“I look forward to getting used to that,” Will laughed.


	4. Unfinished morning thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't finished. 
> 
> It was intended for the filth-fest that is Not Such a Bad Idea but somehow the tone was off and I couldn't figure out where I wanted it to go so I'm chucking it up here because there are bits of it I like but it's 6000 words of not salvagable for that story. 
> 
> It just sort of stops. 
> 
> It also isn't very closely edited. 
> 
> I shouldn't post it. 
> 
> *shrugs*

Jem watched her sleep. Will's crush. He had already smoothed all her hair back from her face and twisted it together so it laid over her shoulder neatly. He was trying to figure out if that was an inappropriate thing to do when she stirred and stretched. He had kissed one other person before Will and he'd never woken up with anyone else. She wasn't just his first girl, she was his first anyone who wasn't Will. She murmured when he touched her cheek.

"Hey," he whispered.

When her eyes opened, her first expression was surprise. He had his hand against her cheek and he was close to her. Close enough that kissing her forehead wouldn't have taken more than a tilt of his chin. Her surprise unsettled him. He was so far over the line that he’d forgotten there should have have been one. He drew back, giving her more room.

"Jem," she said.

A statement. Not a question or an invitation. A statement that could have meant anything.

"Yeah, good morning Angel," he said.

She stared up at him with big not-quite blue eyes for another moment and then smiled. The tightness in his chest relaxed a fraction. He hadn’t ruined anything.

“So,” she said, “Last night happened.”

“It really did,” he said.

She nodded and bit her lip. He saw the shift in her expression when she made her decision then she rolled into the space between them. They were naked and she didn't seem to care and that sent a shiver up his spine. He wrapped his arms around her and she melted into him with her cheek against his chest. How could she make herself seem small? She had stood tall and commanding when they'd been out on the dance floor the night before but now she was small and soft and needed him to protect her.

"Where's Will?" she asked.

"He got up early," Jem said.

"To go to work?" she asked.

"No, it's Saturday morning. He got up to have a shower and make you coffee," Jem said.

"He made me coffee?" she asked.

"Yes but shh because this is a secret," Jem dropped his voice. It was meant to be overly theatrical. A joke but she nodded like he meant it in the utmost seriousness. She made his heart beat the wrong speed when she did things like that. She wasn't completely awake and he was unreasonably protective of her. She had looked up at him with these same partially open lips when she'd been panting after an orgasm the night before. He had to regather his thoughts after noticing that particular detail.

"He doesn't want you to leave so he's coming up with reasons for you to stay. He'll make you coffee then breakfast then find your favourite movie on Netflix. He doesn't get up early, ever. I’m a little jealous actually," Jem said.

"Should I go?" she asked. Her voice was small and his heart skipped in its rhythm again. She sounded unsure. He hadn't meant to make her uncomfortable. He had intended to be cute and flirty and maybe he just didn't know how to do that with a girl. Truth be told, maybe he just didn’t know how to do that with anyone.

"No! No, no, stay if you want to," he said.

"He's not my boyfriend," she said in a whisper.

"He wants you here," Jem said pushing her hair back. He realized a moment later what she needed to hear and leaned in so his lips where against her forehead when he said, "I want you here."

Her tension let out and as she relaxed so did he. He wasn't used to girls. Girls were shaped differently. Will was the only person that Jem was ever physical with. He had a few friends but no one who would do more than slap his shoulder or elbow him in the ribs. His parents lived on another continent and so Will was the only person he ever really touched. This girl was so different. She was softer and she requested rather than demanded and he could have killed someone who hurt her.

"I like it here," she said.

Jem tilted her face up and kissed her. Soft and slow as he pressed her back. She laid back against the mattress and kissed him back. Her hair was silk and her skin was warm and her breasts were soft against his chest when he leaned down against her. He pressed his teeth against her lower lip. Almost biting but not enough to hurt and her eyes flicked up to meet his as she kept her mouth open for him.

The first time Jem had ever been with anyone, Will had taken complete control. They had since learned to negotiate and find a balance. Tessa was an entirely different creature. Even during nights where Jem had negotiated Will into taking the bottom, it wasn't like this. Tessa felt like an offer rather than a concession. He felt like she needed him to protect her and look after her and treat her carefully.

"Why do you trust me?" Jem asked her. He didn't draw back. He kept his mouth against hers as he talked.

"You're trustworthy," she said.

He frowned at her. She was a stranger. They had met less than twelve hours before. He kissed her again. Harder. Much harder. He rolled her down onto her back, taking advantage of his size to pin her against the mattress. She didn't even slow until he put both his knees between hers and forced them wide. She opened her eyes but once she made eye contact with him, she relaxed again and kissed him. Confident in her safety with him. She just laid back and let him do what he wanted.

"Do you need a shower or a cup of coffee? Tea? Maybe pancakes or toast?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said.

She was still soft edged and pliant below him but sending her to shower felt like something reasonable. Pinning her where she lay and fucking her until she pressed into him and shook, were not reasonable desires before breakfast. He let her up, he pushed her into the bathroom then he leaned against the closed door for a minute. He waited until she turned on the water like that would mean he was safe.

He pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and went to find Will in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around Will's waist and set his chin on Will's shoulder and pretended he was looking at the pan of breakfast food that was sizzling away on the stove top. He wasn't. He was pressing himself in close and trying to make sense of the way that the girl had blinked up at him with perfect trust.

"Good morning," Will said.

"Hey," Jem said pressing a kiss against Will's neck.

"Are you alright?" Will asked.

"I didn't think I'd like last night very much," Jem said.

"What do you mean?" Will asked.

"I agreed to the idea of taking a girl home because you wanted it," Jem said.

"And?"

"I am pretty sure that if I went into the shower with her and tried to fuck her up against the wall that she would not only let me but like it and it's screwing with my head," Jem said.

"You're not as gay as you thought you were," Will said.

"You mocking is not helping," Jem said.

"You like her," Will said.

"Yeah."

"That's not a bad thing."

"I don't do that, not with women, I just don't."

"You did last night."

Jem dropped his head against Will's shoulder and let out a huff of air. Will laughed at him and turned over the omelet in the pan so the other side could cook. Will reached up and patted the side of Jem's head. It was patronizing but cute enough to be tolerated. Jem retreated and helped himself to coffee before he sat up on the counter to watch Will cook. Will wasn’t really much of a cook. There was a list of about ten things that he could reliably make and anything else was a shot in the dark that was likely to set off a smoke detector. Omelets and bacon seemed to be within his skill set.

“If she’s showering, she not running,” Will said.

Jem didn’t answer, he just reached out and took an orange from Will’s hand and started to peel it. Will didn’t need a second person to have a conversation, not really, he just talked it through with himself. Jem ate pieces of orange and listened to Will worry about the girl in the bathroom. Once he’d turned down the heat on all the food, Jem reached out and grabbed hold of Will’s shirt and pulled him in. Sitting on the counter meant he was taller than Will was and he had to tilt his chin up for the kiss.

“You taste like orange juice and coffee, it’s not a good combination,” Will said.

“You don’t want me to stop though,” Jem said.

“This is why my food burns. It isn’t because I am a bad cook, it’s because you distract me,” Will said.

“But you don’t want me to stop, do you?” Jem repeated.

Will didn’t answer so Jem pulled him in with a hand on either side of his face to kiss him again. Will’s hands were on his knees and slid up slowly, matching the speed of the kiss. Jem hadn’t put on a shirt and when Will’s hands got to his waist, they explored across bare skin. They would have let the breakfast burn and ended up on the floor if they hadn’t been interrupted.

“Oh,” she said.

Will pulled back in surprise. Jem didn’t let go of him immediately, he just looked over his shoulder to see Tessa standing beside the table. Will turned to look at her. She wore a pair of track pants that pooled a little at her feet and a jersey from a team Will had been on back at school. Her wet hair was braided but a piece lying against her face was starting to curl.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, um, interrupt,” she said.

“You didn’t,” Jem said.

He held out a hand for her and hoped her irrational trust in him would be enough to smooth over the awkwardness. She took a few steps forward and he realized that her feet were bare which somehow made the way she looked in borrowed clothes that much better. She was adorable. Without the makeup around her eyes or the skirt that hung on every curve, she looked so much younger.

He pulled her in and Will looped an arm around her waist so she was held against them. Jem slid forward and readjusted his knees so he had both of them between his legs. Will played with the little stray curl at her temple while her eyes jumped between them. Quiet and watchful but once again unshakably confident. She ricocheted. Nervous and then unshakable and then nervous again.

“Hungry?” Will asked.

“Is that a euphemism?” she asked.

“Usually it would be but in this case, I made spinach omelets and bacon and I think Jem left some of the fruit uneaten. Oh, and I’ll put on toast,” Will said.

“I would love something, yes,” she said.

Tessa’s eyes cut to Jem and he raised his eyebrows at her. Will caught the look and Tessa just waved him off. He left her standing with Jem to grab plates and start serving. Jem grabbed the ties on the borrowed track pants and tugged her into the space that Will had just left.

“I did eat most of the fruit,” he said. He held up a piece of orange to her and when she lifted her hand he shook his head. She held his gaze and he couldn’t stop his smile from spreading. She gave him a disapproving look and he held her gaze. She opened her mouth and took the fruit out of his hand without a word.

“Everything you do is hot,” he told her as she chewed.

“You just like bossing people around,” she said.

“Yes and I particularly like bossing you around,” Jem said.

“Leave her alone, come eat,” Will said.

Breakfast conversation was normal and wholesome and Jem was only halfway paying any attention. Will had sisters and she had a brother and he was an only child. She hated pineapple and didn’t think England had very good apples. Will got her on the topic of poets from some very specific time period and they argued back and forth until Jem had completely lost the thread of the conversation to poetry jargon and comments that only made sense if you had read everything that Keats ever wrote and he couldn’t even name a poem by Keats. Then they wound through to work and to music and she was making Jem promise to play something for her.

Jem liked her. Not just the way she gave up control to him or her confident smile or the way her hair felt in his fingers. He liked listening to her talk and the way she kept up with Will when he was showing off. He asked questions not because it was polite but because he wanted to know the answers.

This was not what he had expected to happen when they picked a girl up at a bar.

Once she had a second cup off coffee in hand and they’d dumped dishes off in the sink, Will pulled her into his lap on the sofa. Jem sat down beside them and she draped her knees over his lap. He slipped a hand up under the cuff of her pants and let it stroke easily from her ankle to just behind her knee and then back down again. A little less new friends sharing a meal and a lot less wholesome but she smiled at him like it was a relief.

“Are you going to ask me what I want for Christmas?” she asked Will. She perched on his lap and he played with the stray pieces of hair that had multiplied around her face as her braid dried.

“Christmas is months away, you don’t want to wait that long for your present, do you?” he said.

“No,” she said.

“Also unless what you want is another dirty threesome, I’m probably not the right person to be talking to,” Will said.

She laughed and leaned against his chest, “I was expecting you to kick me out first thing in morning. I had told myself that if you called me a cab, I should be thankful.”

“Do you want to leave?” Jem asked.

“No,” she said.

“We’ll send you home on Sunday night then. Spend the weekend,” he said.

“I didn’t pack for a weekend away,” she said.

“You can spend a weekend in my clothes,” Will said, “Or naked, you can spend most of the time naked.”

Jem watched her teeth sink into her lower lip at that. She was blushing just a little bit and Jem grabbed her shirt and tugged her forward to kiss. Will had to pull back to make space for it and laughed a little but Jem didn’t let that stop him.

“Are you staying?” he asked when she drew back.

“Yeah, I’m staying,” she said.

"Thoughts on kink?" Will asked.

Tessa turned and looked at him. Jem was good at not getting jealous. He had always been sure, unwaveringly sure, that Will was his. He knew Will better than he knew any other person on the planet. But this. This was a little too close to the line. Jem knew that the way Tessa looked up, with her eyes just a little too wide and her teeth sunk into her bottom lip again was everything Will wanted.

Before jealousy could shoot up through Jem, Will made eye contact and raised his eyebrows.

Jem’s stomach settled.

Having her here was a shared thing.

She wasn’t Will's.

She was theirs.

"Like licking toes?" she asked.

"I wasn't thinking that in particular," Will said.

"What were you thinking?" she asked.

"Bondage and begging," Will said.

Her eyes got a little wider. Jem leaned in and kissed her cheek. Some of her tension released. He calmed her and he couldn't figure out why. He kept close while Will talked. Her hair smelled like his shampoo and the odd little intimacy of that realization made him smile.

"Bondage?" she said when neither of them answered her expression.

"I was thinking we would start simple with hand cuffs," Will said.

"Handcuffs?" she said.

"We could cuff you to the bed, pull an orgasm out of you a few times then fuck you till you're shaking and pleading," Will said.

"Don't you dare start her off that rough," Jem said.

"Last night is proof that she likes multiple orgasms, tying her down doesn't make it that much different," Will said. He touched Tessa's face and she looked at him.

The look wasn't nervous.

Well, not quite nervous.

She was out of her depth and that look said she wasn't sure what to do about it. Last night, with her low cut silk shirt and her tight skirt, that mix of arousal and apprehension had been nearly pornographic. It has seemed like it was part of a seduction. Now, with no make up and wearing over sized clothing it was a completely different kind of look. It didn't seem contrived or intentional. Jem's need to protect her rose back up.

"It is your call," Jem said before Will could say anything.

"If I try it and don't like it?" she asked.

"You stop it, it stops," Will said into her ear. "Red is the safe word we use."

"How far does this go?" she asked.

"Safe words? Always, the point is that there isn't any time you can't use it," he said.

"I meant, kinky stuff, do you have a plan for me?" she asked.

"The original plan was a stranger, a cheap motel and leaving before dawn, we're well off the plan now," Jem said.

"You know what I mean," she said.

"We're going to push until we find boundaries. You get to set the boundaries and then we play within them. Yeah, I have things in mind for you but we're going to go slow and make sure you like it," Will said.

"What do you want?" Jem asked.

She turned scarlet and looked away from him. He leaned in and rearranged her knees so he could get closer to her and then just waited. Will was laughing softly in her ear and nuzzling the side of her face until she finally turned back to Jem. She closed her eyes before she started to talk. Her embarrassment was adorable.

"I like being this close. I want to be between you again. I really liked being... the oral... when you...," he nodded at her and she said, "and he's right, I liked the multiple orgasms. I like watching you kiss."

"You want to watch me fuck him?" Will asked.

She looked up at Will who was grinning like this was the best idea he had ever come up with in his life. Jem looked at him but he didn't look away from Tessa until she shrugged and said, "Yeah, maybe a little bit."

"Tie her to the headboard and give her something to watch or let her participate a little bit?" Will asked.

"Tie her up," Jem said before his rational mind had caught up to the conversation.

So much for all his admonishments to Will that they be gentle with her. She liked to touch, her hand was on his arm as they spoke, absent little strokes just because she liked to touch and be touched. Tying her up and leaving her out would frustrate her more than she was aware of and he liked the idea of doing it to her. Goddamn it but he shouldn't be allowed near nice girls like her. Before he could let that train of thought get too far along she laughed and nodded, still blushing.

"Ok, let's try it," she said.

"I'm not going to be nice to him," Will said.

"Fucking hell," Jem said.

"Oh and he swears like a sailor and pretends he doesn't love it," Will said.

Jem wasn't particularly keen on Will getting rough while Tessa watched but stripping her down and tying her up was immediately his favourite part of the entire thing so far. She was pliant and smiling as they slid hands up under the borrowed clothes to find she was wearing nothing underneath. Jem couldn't remember where they'd left her underwear but it must still be there because she hadn't gone to find any of it. She didn't flinch at being naked or being pushed back into the bedroom.

Will chose leather cuffs for her. Jem usually called them the asylum cuffs. They were part of some overly complicated harness thing that they'd never actually used because it was ridiculous. They looked like the kind of cuffs you saw restraining patients in movies with insane asylums. Wide leather cuffs with little latches that could be attached to other things. They were soft enough that they didn't leave marks and strong enough to take being struggled against.

Will pushed her into place so that she sat up with her back against the headboard and then attached the cuffs with her arms spread wide. She spread her knees on her own without having to discuss it, neither of them touched her. She shifted and the places where the cuffs attached clinked with their little metal links against the metal of the headboard.

"The safeword is real, use it if you need it," Will told her.

Jem braced his hands on either side of her head so that he was all she could see. He was going to collapse against her at some point, he knew that. Will never stopped at enough. Will pushed to too much when Jem was panting and struggling and overwhelmed. He had every intention of leaning into her when it got there. He would cuddle into her and the idea of Will taking it too far while he cuddled in against her was comforting. Will was going to be rough but he had her there, soft and gentle and watching him with wide eyes.

Jem kissed her. She closed her eyes and missed his wince as Will pushed two fingers into him. He didn’t break the kiss as Will pushed his knees farther apart and pulled on his hips until his back arched. Sometimes this was the best part but today Will was quick and a little rough. They had all day but that didn’t make Will any less impatient. Jem had to hold on to the headboard to keep himself close enough to her to kiss. He managed it until Will slid inside.

Jem dropped his head to her shoulder and she nuzzled his temple.

“You’re fucking perfect,” he whispered against her neck.

He wasn’t sure if it was loud enough for her to even hear but he didn’t really care. He wanted to be able to see her when she looked up at Will over his shoulder but being able to feel her heart rate as it sped up was more than enough to make up for it.

Behind him, Will was fast and hard and rough enough to push against the border between pleasure and pain. He nuzzled into Tessa’s neck each time it was too hard and she whispered soft noises that might have been words into his ear and that alone could have kept anything Will did on the right side of the line.

“He’s adorable when he’s all incoherent, isn’t he?” Will said.

“He’s been adorable every moment since I met him,” Tessa said.

“I am right here,” Jem said.

His voice was breathy and it was almost a lie. He was barely there. He was drifting farther and farther away from conscious thought. She was gentle and trapped. Each time he heard her restraints click and keep her from reaching for him or Will or whatever it was she wanted, he felt a little thrill. He was just as trapped. Will had put him in a position where if he let go he was probably just going to collapse and wind up face down and trembling.

He was distracted by the idea of letting Will cross lines he’d previously set in stone if he could have her there with him. He could take it rougher if she was there, murmuring in his ear. This was too hard and too fast and he was enjoying it more than he could have imagined. They were still talking over him and he gave up pretending he was paying attention and buried his face into Tessa’s shoulder and leaned back into Will as much as his position would allow.

Will leaned down over him so they were as pressed together as they could be and he whispered, “You’re a slutty little thing.”

“Fuck off,” Jem shot back.

“I plan on fucking until I get off, that’s about the same, isn’t it?” Will said.

“I dunno, I’m still waiting to be impressed,” Jem said.

Will snorted and slapped his ass. It wasn’t hard enough to make Jem more than tense for a second but it sounded far worse than that and Tessa gasped in his ear. He kept one hand in place so he didn’t loose his balance if Will went back to going hard and used his other to catch her face. She was looking at Will over his shoulder and he turned her back to him.

“Are you worried about me?” he asked.

“She should be,” Will said.

“He’s a posturing jackass on the best of days, having an audience while he fucks obviously makes it worse,” Jem explained.

Will spanked him again and then leaned in so as much of his cock as possible was pressed into Jem’s body. It hurt. Actually hurt. Jem groaned but held Tessa so she was looking at him, not at Will. He didn’t stop Will. The boundary between pleasure and pain was a broad one for Jem, far broader than it was for Will and while this was too far, it wasn’t so far that he wanted it to stop. He lost the ability to speak around the feeling of ‘too much’ and so he pressed poorly aimed kisses against Tessa’s mouth and cheek and neck and as he sank back in to curl against her shoulder again.

The little chains holding her cuffs to the bed frame clinked and she shifted below him but she didn’t try to stop anything either. Jem let his hand slide down her body as Will picked up a long, deep thrust. As Will pushed in, he was pressed against her and his hand tightened wherever it had been in the moment: on her breast then her waist then her thigh. She reacted to each touch. A little murmur, arching her back so her breast pressed into his hand, adjusting her knees.

“When I said perfect, I meant perfect,” he said to her.

Will picked up speed. Not as hard but so much faster. Jem shivered and held onto Tessa. He wasn’t holding the headboard to keep himself up anymore, he was collapsing against her. Will’s hands tightened on his hips.

“Selfish jackass,” Jem muttered.

Will chuckled but didn’t stop, didn’t slow and came leaning in hard against Jem’s body. They both pressed into Tessa and Jem felt her shift. He let himself it was an attempt at comfort but he couldn’t tell. Will pulled back and flopped down on the bed with a laugh.

Jem could have taken a moment to relax, even just to breathe, but he didn't. He was still breathless and overwhelmed and his body was throbbing. Desire and a thread of something that was going to be pain later but was still some kind of pleasure right now. Will had come but he hadn't and the need was still there in his stomach. A kind of aching frustrating. He didn't do anything about it. He slid down her body until his head was on her thigh. Lazily, he reached out a finger and stroked her. She was dripping wet.

“You’re a little turned on,” Jem muttered.

"Let me go?" she asked.

"And why would we do that?" Will asked.

"My shoulders are aching," she said.

Jem was worried that Will was going to refuse her simply because he was on a power trip. He started to shift so he could turn and look up at Will.

"I don’t want to let you go, but we could talk about another position," Will said.

"Ok," she said.

Will wanted her with her hands bound above her head but as soon as he unclipped the cuffs from the headboard, Jem grabbed her and pulled her down so she was flat on her back. She yelped. He pulled her down until she was laying against him and he could look her in the eyes again. Being able to feel her skin against his own was a relief after being left without release and he snuggled in against her.

"Or that, that's good too," Will said.

He pulled her arms back and Jem felt her struggle before falling still and obedient again. Will attached her wrists together behind a post of the headboard so she was stretched out on her back but just as trapped as she had been when she was sitting. Jem caught her chin and tilted her face down to look at him. Her eyes were wide and surprised and he didn't know her well enough yet to say what the frown line between her eyebrows was. Frustration at being tied up? Worry? Was she scared?

"You ok so far?" Jem asked.

"I'm fantastic, I not the on who just…" she paused on the word.

"Violent fucking is probably the best term for it," Jem said.

"Yeah, that," she said.

"I meant it when I said I liked it," he said.

"I know. It's kind of obvious."

"I'm going to make you come now."

"Yes, please."

Jem kissed her and then slid down her body until he was between her legs again. She was stretched out above him and he paused to rub at the tense muscles of her stomach with the heel of his hand. She relaxed and sighed. When he looked up to see if she was looking at him, Will was in the way. Jem paused to watch them kiss and felt that spectre of jealousy again. He slid two fingers into her body. Watching her gasp and watching Will kiss her harder pushed most of the jealousy away. Still, Jem reached for Will and pulled his attention down for a kiss. Will didn't disappoint, Will kissed him just as hard as he had kissed her and for a moment it was just them.

When it broke apart, Will was smiling and that flash of jealousy was gone. Jem slid back down between her knees and ran his tongue over her in long strokes a few times until she squirmed and pressed her knees wider.

There wasn’t much Jem needed to do to make sure she was warmed up. She twisted against her restraints and arched her back up into him. He wasn’t doing much to push her towards release. He wanted to make her wait for that. He was just categorizing reactions. He slipped his fingers inside her and she let her mouth fall open.

Will slid in closer to them. She turned her attention back to him. Jem could calm her but Will would always pull her attention.


End file.
